


Fray

by Cheloya



Series: Knife Party [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Gen, Mercy Street RP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-10-27 06:56:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10804083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheloya/pseuds/Cheloya
Summary: Old, imported. Yamada has a lot to learn.





	Fray

In truth, Mayuri had expected disaster when the boy had started his internship at St. Camillo’s, but he had found, to his surprise, that working with Yamada was practically a dream. He learned the way Mayuri preferred to work, and stuck to it rigorously, without so much as a breath of complaint. At first he had floated in the background, observing in silence while the other nurses worked effortlessly around him. When the time came for him to take a more active role in surgery – once he was trusted to keep an eye on monitors and hand things to the doctor – he was only a little more visible, noting brain patterns and heart rates in his quiet, unobtrusive voice in a way that made him seem little more than a voice in the back of Mayuri’s own mind.

He learned well, if not exceptionally quickly, and by the time they moved on to Hanatarou handling minor surgery himself and Mayuri watching critically while another nurse read from the screens. The boy’s competence was impressive, considering how little of it carried over to his everyday life. In the break room, when he opened his locker at the end of the day and everything in it would immediately tumble to the floor, the way he’d sweat too much after he had donned his gloves and wind up with gluggy residue accumulated between his fingers – Mayuri felt little chills buzz through his bones at the boy’s uselessness, at his utter lack of method. It was ridiculous, and more ridiculous, perhaps, was how much Yamada’s failures outside the operating room irritated Mayuri.

It got to the point, eventually, where the doctor pulled him aside, irritable after yet another perfect, blissfully quiet surgery, followed immediately by Yamada’s near-upset of an entire shelf of medical records. “Shape up,” he snapped, and was appalled at the way the boy’s face fell, and, really, quite surprised at the miserable, guilty horror that spread across his face.

“What am I doing wrong?” he pleaded, pulling at his gloves, blue-grey eyes huge and fretful. “I know you hate explaining – just once, please, I promise I’ll—I’ll fix it—”

Mayuri blinked, amber eyes at first puzzled, and then a neat triangulation of irritation, dismissal, and exasperation. “Not in there,” the doctor scowled. “In there you’re damn near perfect. Out here—” He stabbed a finger into the air, in the direction of the shelf, the corridor, the world outside the OR. “You’re a walking disaster. It’s infuriating.”

After the way the boy’s expression had crumpled at his first harsh words, Mayuri had expected a similar reaction, now. What he had not expected was the odd expression spreading across Hanatarou’s face. Mayuri didn’t recognise it. It certainly didn’t _look_ like hurt or anger.

“Near perfect?” Yamada whispered. His face was turning an interesting shade of pink; his eyes practically glittered. “Really?”

Mayuri stared. “Did you listen to anything I just—” He stopped, and resisted the urge to smack still-bloody gloved hands against his forehead – or against the boy’s. Yamada’s glow – and it really was a glow, when he looked so shyly hopeful like that – was enough to make him nauseous. “Yes,” he admitted, narrowly. “Very good. _However_.”

And there he stopped, because although he was quite sure there had been a point that he was trying to make, he had never actually seen Yamada happy before – he was usually a simmering pot of nerves, barely held under control within the theater and carefully ignored outside of it. He opened his mouth to continue, scowling darkly as he attempted to locate his tongue, and voice, but the intern made a small, apologetic sound, and started speaking first.

“I’ll try harder, Doctor Kurotsuchi,” he promised. He wasn’t quite looking at Mayuri when he spoke, though his blue-grey eyes were much calmer than they had been. “Thankyou for your time.” He had turned that soft pink shade again as he smiled at the taller man.

There was a different kind of chill down his limbs, then, one he hadn’t felt for many years – if, indeed, at all. Turning away from the boy with a disdainful, “Pah!” he reminded himself of the fact that for all his intelligence in the operating room, Yamada was a blithering nitwit, and tried, really tried, not to wonder whether his determination, intuition, and above all, quiet compliance, would carry over into more private, personal endeavours.


End file.
